Benjamin Gwinneth: Uncovering the effects of past climate change

Benjamin Gwinneth felt right at home when he arrived from the UK in August to take up his new position as assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Université de Montréal.

That’s because he has close ties to Montreal from his days as a Ph.D. student in McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Studies, where he did ground-breaking work from 2017 to 2022 on the effects of climate change on the ancient Mayan city of Itzan.

Blending science and history

Gwinneth earned a combined B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Earth Sciences from the University of Leeds in England in 2014, completing his master’s research at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He then worked as a research assistant in Madrid, before crossing the Atlantic for his doctorate at McGill.

After completing his Ph.D. at McGill, Gwinneth honed his skills in two postdocs, one in Zurich on geochemical processes in modern lakes, and one in São Paulo on the calibration of technologies to improve the precision of climate inference.

Asked why he chose to study geography in the first place, Gwinneth said he was initially drawn to history. “But then a geology professor introduced me to the role of history in natural systems,” he recalled. “Geography lets me combine my twin interests in history and the sciences. I’ve always loved juggling different perspectives.”

From ancient civilizations to sustainability

Gwinneth’s doctoral research at McGill focused on climate variability and its impact on the Mayan city of Itzan, located in present-day Guatemala.

“We discovered that over a period of 3,300 years, the population declined not only during periods of drought, as previously thought, but also during extremely wet periods,” he said.

Gwinneth made this discovery using an original method: the analysis of stanols, molecules found in human and animal fecal matter preserved for millennia in sediments at the bottom of Laguna Itzan.

He took core samples of the lake’s sediments and used organic and inorganic geochemical techniques to measure stanol concentrations. He then correlated changes in these concentrations with changes in climatic conditions.

Gwinneth’s work has earned a number of awards from the scientific community, including a SciArt200 award in 2022 for co-directing a video illustrating his research.

In the same year, he was selected as a Green Talent by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The award promotes the international exchange of ideas around sustainability and building a greener future.

Turning his sights to caribou migrations

In his new position at Université de Montréal, Gwinneth intends to continue his research in Central America, in particular on how ancient civilizations changed the land through practices such as burning vegetation to make way for agriculture.

But he also has his eyes set on projects closer to home, such as investigating how the migration patterns of Quebec’s caribou herds have changed in response to climate change, hunting pressure and environmental stresses.

“I am delighted to be joining Université de Montréal!” he said. “The interdisciplinary environment of the Geography Department is a perfect fit for my research approach.”